


Unlauded Valor

by Churbooseanon



Series: Starlight Challenges [12]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-05 03:02:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4163199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Churbooseanon/pseuds/Churbooseanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Throughout her time in PFL Connie knows what her mission is. Knows where her loyalties lie. Learns what she must do. </p><p>If only it wasn't all too late. If only it didn't mean she had to turn her back on those she cares about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unlauded Valor

**Author's Note:**

> For Starlight Challenge Prompt 5/11/2015: Don't run. They'll shoot if you run.

The problem, she will realize looking back, is the fact that Connecticut was never like the other members of Project Freelancer. At least, not like the ones that she will one day realize were picked to be in the top dozen candidates that the Director had envisioned all along. It’s only a lot further down the line, after she’s hacked personnel files open, that the truth comes out, and the realization hits her as to why she’s so different from the others. Why it is the Director is less prone to trusting her, and why of the others here are so loyal. 

It’s on the first pass that pares them down to only twenty that she thinks she can start to get it. Only after that first cut that they finally get shore leave again. The initial rush and struggle to prove themselves earns them time on a small, peaceful colony world well behind the front lines called Gievalis, a world that Florida claims to be from. Of course Connie takes that with a grain of salt because Florida has claimed origin from several different planets at that point and she’s learned to take what he says with a healthy dose of skepticism. Not that he’s as bad as Wyoming (those jokes are terrible), or York (he needs to stop flirting), or even Minnesota, who is just the kind of chatterbox that has always annoyed Connie in ways she can’t explain. 

But it’s on shore, it’s on their break, that she gets the first inkling. It isn’t possible for everyone to stick together on the ground, and there are more than a few personalities that would preclude the idea, so Connie just ends up following around a smaller group composed of the surly and sweet combination of the Dakota twins, talkative York, the ‘baby’ Washington, and strangely enough the head of the pack, Carolina. It takes hours of wandering around, all of them spending insane amounts of money on frivolities and small items to take back to the ship in bulk (everyone concerned it could be another half a year lull before they get personal time planetside somewhere), before they end up where Connie wants them. 

The bar is surprisingly quiet, but maybe made less surprising given it’s only about one in the afternoon. But alcohol is prohibited on the ship, not everyone has figured out that the pilot on one of the Pelicans runs the equivalent of the blackmarket on the ship. Niner is where Connie gets her rare treats, but the price can be high. Anyway, bars mean alcohol and looser to normal tongues, and it’s her job to know. And luck of all luck, even when they get to the table with their likely watered down beers, she doesn’t even have to broach the topic herself. 

“So… I guess the question is why,” York says into his second drink, leaning back in his seat and throwing his arms over Carolina and Connie, who have made the mistake of sitting on either side of him. 

“Why what?” Wash asks on the other side of the table, frowning. 

“Knowing him it could be anything from ‘why this bar’ to ‘why is it that the universe is always moving toward entropy’?” North laughs, and South rolls her eyes. Connie knows that the more skillful of the twins wonders why her towering brother makes any time for York at all, but Connie has her suspicions on that as well. Maybe she’s just more observant. 

Then again, that’s why she’s here, right? 

“Why are we here?” York provides happily. Then, as North starts to raise his drink to take a small victory point, York plows on. “Not in this bar. I mean the project. I know why I joined up. But I can’t imagine what certain of us are doing here. Like you, Wash. You are barely even old enough to shave.”

“I’m twenty-four,” Wash sighs, ready to fight the longstanding battle again. Connie just shakes her head and Wash seems to agree because he continues on. “Don’t ask me. My CO put me in for it.”

“Can’t believe he wouldn’t want a loser like you around,” South grumbles into her own drink, only to get elbowed by her brother. 

“Now South, just because the kid eeked out a few thousandths of a point on you in the rifle range doesn’t mean you can say that,” North chides, team mother as he always is. 

Connie already thinks she knows why North is here, and the simple answer is South. Sure, he’s a great shot and a good fighter, but all of them have that to various degrees. You didn’t get into PFL on good looks and recommendations alone. Everyone had skills and values to both the military and a secretive program like this. Connie, for instance, was lauded for her skills with computers, explosives and knives. Which, of course, only makes sense when ONI-III is trying to sell you to the project as a viable candidate so they can slip in a quiet, internal observer that hopefully no one knows about. 

It’s what makes her different, and she knows that. Sure, she believes in the war, wants to win it, and a lot of her personnel folder is accurate down to the last period. She’s as committed to victory as anyone else at this table, but she hasn’t drunk the kool-aid so to speak. At least, she doesn’t know that she’s the only one that hasn’t. Yet. 

“Anyway,” York continues, ignoring North and South and even Connie’s thoughtfulness, “I’m just asking because, you know, sometimes it feels like we’d be more useful on the front lines rather than going through even more training, right?”

South scoffs as Washington nods, and it looks like the other woman is going to lean across her brother and steal Wash’s drink just for being contrary when Carolina clears her throat. 

Everyone goes silent to listen. None of you know that in the months to come there would be an almost irrational irritation in South for Carolina. They don’t know that North will be just as bitter over her arrival on the scene of ops to make up for their ‘shortcomings.’ York isn’t her number two yet, and Wash doesn’t see her as Boss. No, for now she’s one of them. Better, yes, but still one of them. There is no competition yet, no reason to see her has blinded by something that keeps her from seeing what the program is becoming. She’s one of them, even if she’s just a bit out of reach. 

“I owe him more than I could ever sum up in a simple conversation,” Carolina offers the table, voice carefully level and controlled. Not a hint of emotion. Which strikes Connie as odd. Carolina is a very emotional woman, made of smiles and laughter and a sense of humor that makes even Wyoming groan sometimes. To have her say so little and imply so much wasn’t her normal style at all. 

“Makes two of us,” York chuckles, shaking his head. 

“Now I have to know what that means,” North smiles at York. “Clearly there’s a story here.”

“Long story made extremely short, without this project, I’d probably have been court martialled for having fucking common sense,” York shrugs. “I promise I didn’t get anyone killed. Tried to do the opposite. Our illustrious and nameless Director decided to scoop me out of my jail cell and conscript me into his project. What about you two?”

North takes the invitation for the twins to explain on himself, as South is clearly busy waving their waitress down for another round. 

“I know this may be hard to believe, but South has quite a mouth on her,” North grins as the table laughs and his sister hits him upside the head. 

“I was going to get in a lot of trouble for calling a General a know-nothing fuck-truck.”

“To his face,” North adds after South has spoken her piece. “After punching him in the throat.”

The whole table bursts out laughing, and even Connie has to chuckle. Whether the story is true or not is a question she can’t answer yet, but it sure as hell sounds like South. 

“Let me guess,” Wash cuts into the laughter, even though his voice is breathless with his own, “North then proceeded to try and pull her off of him.”

“Hell no,” South grins maniacally, “idiot turned to fight the Fuck-truck’s guard off while I kept shouting.”

“Once a team, always a team,” Carolina notes through her own giggles. 

Connie doesn’t have a story like them, she realizes. When she’s prompted she winds a mostly true story about being sent off planet by her parents when she was really little, and the world getting glassed. It’s about revenge, survival for her. It’s completely true and so patently false at the same time that it takes a bit like ashes in Connie’s mouth every time she’ll repeat it in the future. They take it though, because who can’t understand that? They’re fighting for survival. Every last one of them understands a fight like that. More than that even. And what the Director is offering is supposed to be a way to turn top ranking soldiers into super weapons to rival the SPARTAN program with lower level tech, active field experience, and a level of teamwork that should make other units seem pathetic. 

It’s a lofty goal. 

One she doesn’t know they will have held just barely out of reach before it’s snatched away forever. Like so many other things. 

* * * * * *

By the time the leaderboards go up they are down to fifteen and Connie has gotten herself into the parts of the ship’s systems that she never should be able to get to. Clearly the AI running the ship, listed in the MOI’s logs as Unit Alpha, isn’t watching the systems the way that most AI would be. The Dumb AI that seems to run everything, FILSS, is easily pulled away from watching over Connie, it only takes the slightest little virus that Alpha doesn’t catch and that is more than just weird. It’s suspicious. Almost as suspicious as the fact that she’s never spoken to Alpha, never seen Alpha, never heard his name so much as mentioned. 

That being said, she knows what he looks like. A small, brilliant white man clad as a SPARTAN. This Connie fines almost suspicious. All of her training regarding AIs and their typical behavior patterns suggests this is a divergence from the norm. This vessel, while a unit in the UNSC, is still primarily a research platform, even if it is training soldiers. To have its assigned AI take such an aggressive, militant form is… perhaps it aspires to be more than it is intended to be? Or perhaps his form relates to the steps the program is finally taking towards its core research goal, the integration of high level, experimental military tech and a level of human-AI integration to achieve safe operation of said tech. Connie knows the SPARTANs can link up with an AI, that the AI is meant to run primarily through their armor suites, but PFL aims for more. 

But AI bond to their crews, to the people that make up members of their contingent on a ship. Sure, they have those they value over others, usually encouraged to be the captain or another senior official. But Alpha, who was supposedly to be working with them in the near future, hasn’t even spoken to a single one of them. 

At least, Connie thinks so. She doesn’t think anyone on the team could keep it secret if they were approached by the ship’s AI. So the question remains, why the distance? 

It’s at fifteen that she gets to the personnel files and understands the compulsive loyalty. Who the Director is and what that means for Carolina. Just how close York was to being shot as a ‘coward’ for what she can see as heroic behavior. The fact that Maine was clean up for some military unit, damaged more than he ever should have and instead of being sent home his reward had been the cushy position with PFL. File after file of said, pained stories and full truths written in plain English. How many of them more or less owe the Director their lives or continued part in the war? How many had too many reasons not to trust, only to put their faith in him? 

The question bothers her as she goes to join the others for the scheduled first round of testing with these new armor mods. 

In three days two more of their number are dead from faulty equipment, and Connie has to wonder when her number will come up. 

Utah and Georgia had no reason to be utterly faithful to the Director and the story he serves up to them too simply. 

“Connie?” 

She looks up from the computer display she had been reading files on, tapping in a quick command to shut down her data files. Secret archives she’s compiling, and the more she digs, the more she fears for what this project is going to turn into. Just recently payments have started to pass from the Director and into the hands of the Chairman of the Oversight Sub-Committee, and that isn’t right. A woman taking money from a man she’s supposed to be watching over, policing the activity of, has to be the worst sort of sign. All of it will go into her pending report to her handler, but that means getting her feet back on a planet where she can make the drop and hope it gets picked up in time. 

“Hey Wash,” she greets, looking up, quickly pulling her memory stick from the side of the desk she’s working at. “What’s up?”

“Not much,” he answers, his voice low and hell, she knows he sounds nervous. Nervous and he needs a real conversation. Not someone to listen or he would have gone to Maine. Not someone who will tease him, otherwise he would have accepted York. Definitely not someone who was going to mother him, so that ruled North out. And Wash, like Connie has a serious aversion to the ship’s Counselor, but hers is based very heavily on how the man follows the Director around like he’s a puppy looking for a scrap of food. 

“They put up tomorrow’s schedule, didn’t they?” she asks, frowning. Given the losses they are suffering lately, with Mississippi quietly ‘pulling out’ of the program due to ‘family concerns’, it has to be an unnerving thing for him. Especially given his voice suggests that it’s him up tomorrow. 

“Yeah,” he sighs, moving to sit next to her. As always he’s in full armor, and Connie gets why now that she can see his secrets in print. Wash had seen some bad things in his time in the Marines, worse than a lot of them. The fact that he was still capable of being so young and vibrant and cheerful and above all, pure, is something that makes Connie wonder with every day. Makes her wish she could be like him, but naivete won’t get her anywhere, and won’t save lives. 

It’s memories that keeps him in his armor, so when his hands come up and pull off his helmet, Connie is almost speechless. Seeing Wash’s face is so rare these days. Meals and showers are about the only times he takes his helmet off, and she wonders if he would do even that much if he could get away with not. Good thing the R&D department apparently abandoned efforts to work on a self-cleaning protocol in the helmets. It means Wash breathes unfiltered air from time to time. And it means that right here and now, with his helmet off and his head of bleached-blond hair coming to rest on her shoulder, she can reach up and stroke said hair. It seems to soothe him, and he relaxes a bit more against her. 

“After what happened to Utah…”

She can understand. Watching a friend suffocate can be… was traumatizing. She still has bad dreams about it, and frankly Connie is happy that she only got a unit that projected holograms. Short of the unit exploding, she can’t imagine a reason it could kill her. But Washington…

“What unit did you get again?” she asks, even though she knows exactly what he got from his records. An advanced bioscan suite that she’s not sure really suits a guy like him, but there has to be a rationale to it (beyond the records noting that ‘Alpha’ decided it was the best fit). The micro-EMP, though…

“It’s the EMP I’m worried about,” Wash says, taking the words right out of her mind. “What if my armor isn’t properly shielded? What if it’s stronger than it’s supposed to be? What if the training room where I try it out is less than adequately shielded? We’re talking about something that wipes electronics. What if it destroys FILSS?”

Honestly, Connecticut would expect the bigger problem would be it wiping Alpha, but these ships are shielded pretty much out the ass to keep there from being problems like this. And she knows his armor comes with additional shielding from his own experimental tech. But what she knows and what he’s been told are probably vastly different things and she understands concern. It makes sense when his armor could basically shut down, his helmet hard to get off. If he panicked that would use more air and the helmet filtration systems wouldn’t work to bring in fresh air. If it hit his armor and the surrounded room, no one would get in there in time to get his helmet off and save his life. He could go the way of Utah. 

“Wash,” she coos, running her fingers through his hair, stroking it in soothing manners that she thinks she remembers from her own mother, but who knows anymore. So many things in her own past are up for question these days, and now she wonders if the Project is going the wrong way. But here, this moment, she can help. She can do her duty to ONI and the UNSC and the survival of the human race by reassuring a friend that tomorrow is just another day. 

Not their final one by any stretch of the imagination. 

“It’s going to be okay,” she assures him, voice soft and warm. “Come on, Wash, you know it will be. Do you think the Director, hell, do you think FILSS would let us test something like this if they weren’t certain you would be safe?”

It might be the wrong thing to say, because he tenses up, perhaps remembering Utah and wondering what was up with Georgia (he’d been gone on a long mission with Maine at the time), and Connie has to bite her tongue for saying something so stupid. 

But at least he’s thinking. At least he isn’t sure. Maybe, maybe in the future she’s going to need that if this goes downhill in the way her stomach tells her it’s going to. And she prays it doesn’t do that. Yet she’s really afraid, mind caught up in all the new information she’s been given. 

“Would you feel better if we asked Carolina to talk to the Director to have someone down there with you just in case?”

Wash nods. “Can it be you?”

“Of course. I’ll always be here for you, Wash. Always.”

And she always will, no matter what happens. If this goes the way the nagging voice in her head says it will, she’s going to take him with her. Pull as many of them as she can from the burning wreckage the Director seems to be setting them up for.

* * * * * *

Fear and hypervigilance become the watchwords as Connie watches the Director go off the deep end. Their numbers dwindle to nine: the ones who owe him the most, his watchdog behind a smiling face, and her. Dwindle as she struggles to find every bit of information she can and seek out someone to give it to. Planetside is rarer and rarer these days between missions, and Connie is worried about that. 

It’s two months since she finally gave up on trying to go to ONI with what she has and just tries to find someone, anyone, to get what she knows into the right hands. Because the files are starting to hint at scary things, with a new name in the records and new theories spinning out in vast pages of rambling science from the Director himself in their files. Who is Beta, Connie wonders. What does he mean by fragmentation? What is this final piece to the puzzle that he needs to acquire, and why does the Director keep writing vaguely about ‘her’?

The better question, she thinks, is where all these rumors Internals seems to be hunting even come from. There is nothing that comes from what she’s been doing, that much Connie is certain of. She’s too good to have been caught with her work. No, this is just the Director’s paranoia, a new gift to pair with this leaderboard of his. All the time they spent on team building ruined by this artificial construct and how it pushes Carolina and the others. No, not just pushes them. Drives a wedge between them. Connie can see the way South crows her position over North. Sees how low she is brought when that position is lost. She’s familiar with the way Wyoming eyes North, as if he’s concerned to lose his spot as top sniper. 

And Washington… he doesn’t even listen when she tries to make him see. Sure, she botched the mission, but that had been deliberate. The people at that base had been innocents, and she wasn’t about to blow the thing just because the Director wanted it. Especially given one of her contacts, a UNSC soldier on loan to Charon Industries, had been there. She hadn’t been able to give him much, but the little tidbits she had offered has insured she has a place to go when she’s finally ready to move. A place to take her team when it all hits the fan. 

If only she can get them out. 

“Hey,” South says, sticking her head into Connie’s room. 

The best way to deflect suspicion that you’re hiding anything, Connie has learned, is to have an open door policy and stick to it. So having South just randomly open the door and appear isn’t something Connie is shocked by. Still, it’s a good thing her information gathering results are hidden away in Carolina’s room of all places. 

The Director would never suspect his daughter of betraying him, not with how fiercely loyal she’s been, not even raising her voice as she watches competition wear down the team’s dynamic. 

“Hey,” Connie answers, mid-sit-up. These days she finds the exercises keep her head clear, let her think more about what she has to do. There is a lot of planning that goes into diving into FILSS’s systems for more information and not getting caught. While Connie knows there is no one after her, not really, she still has to worry that at some point she’s going to catch Alpha’s attention and the whole game will be blown. “What’s up?”

“New recruit, three-on-one against the Big Guy, Stache, and Butterfingers.”

Connie actually pauses halfway up, and her muscles protest it. But she can’t move as she tries to process that. There hasn’t been anyone new in a very long time. And three-on-one matches normally involve Carolina brushing up on her multi-combatant CQC. Well, sometimes South and Connie do it too, but that’s less common. 

“New recruit?”

“Yeah, some chick named Texas.”

Oh hell. 

Connie lets her body hit the floor and she breathes out. That’s a name that’s been in the files recently. A name attached to another one, and in a way that makes Connie quite curious. 

“Grab my armor, will you?”

Between the two of them they get her suited up in three minutes flat and then they’re rushing off to the observation room looking over the main training floor, watching a woman in jet black armor starting to warm up with a few experimental swings of the pugil stick. 

She handles herself better than Connie thinks she should. Not that Wyoming isn’t easy to take down about seven or eight pegs in a straight fight. He isn’t a melee guy, but that isn’t his job. His job is to not get close enough to get punched, and Connie can respect that. But York and Maine? They’re good, better than good, and the woman handles them like she’s bored. A disdain that starts with the first fight and stays there as the first shots of round ten rip through the air and make everyone flinch. 

“”What?! Are they using live rounds on the training floor?” Wash’s voice comes out in that high pitched way it does when he’s shocked and worried. 

“Looks like it,” South answers, a bit amused, and Connie thinks she gets why. Trials by fire and all that. 

“That's against protocol, they're gonna kill her!”

“Probably,” Connie answers, her own voice a bit flat. But she knows why. Sees it in the way the woman moves, in the utter confidence of the fight. No, she isn’t going to die, but Connie has to say something, just to make sure she isn’t going crazy from the thoughts running through her head. 

“Someone should get the Director!” Wash protests, turning to look at them. 

Connie can’t help the bitterness to her voice as she laughs. Can’t even help the words from escaping her. “The Director? Who do you think gave them the ammo?”

Everything’s starting to fall apart around them, and somehow Connie is the only one who can’t see it. But now she gets why. She sees what the problem is. They really are too loyal to him. They’re blind to just how wrong everything is going. Being asked to kill civilians and active members of the UNSC. Blowing up a cryogenics facility on Earth. The way Alpha is kept so far away from them and the spiraling thoughts of the Director in his logs the last few months… 

She doesn’t even register the chiding from Carolina as she moves closer to the glass to watch. 

How blind are they, and will they ever wake up to the truth? Connie doesn’t know. But she’s pretty sure she’s the only one that notices the way Tex’s armor sparks when she’s shot. At least, she thinks, she understand where the sparks come from. Why they come. There is a new robotics division on the ship. No one else knows about it, or the shipment of high end gynoids for the Director’s work. 

But she gets it. God does Connie ever get it. 

This is the moment where everything changes. It’s all about to come a mad dash for the very souls of the people around her, if not their lives. Because if this is what she thinks it is, then she thinks she can finally put together the pieces. And the picture that is coming together is a very, very ugly thing. An ugly thing she really only has a glimpse of and that scares her. 

What do you do when the walls are threatening to close in around you and you don’t have an exit strategy in place yet? God Connie wishes she could have an answer to that already. She isn’t ready to go. Doesn’t know enough. Can’t stop the disaster she sees coming. 

When the grenade goes even Connie is frozen in place for a moment. It… it wasn’t even possible was it? 

Except Carolina’s calling for a med team and Connie can feel herself racing for the stairs just like the rest of them. There have been ‘disposable’ people on their team in the past, but their number two? No, it’s not possible. York has to be okay. The Director can’t have intended true harm to his future pet, could he? There is no way that was a real grenade. 

It doesn’t matter that she saw the smoke, the fire. Doesn’t make sense when her feet are on the training room floor and Carolina is on her knees by York and the air smells like explosives. 

How long can all of them go on deluding themselves? How long can she keep hoping for a happy ending? Because it’s not coming, no matter how much she prays. No, it’s time to start trying to end this for real, UNSC approval or not. Before it gets worse than it already is. 

* * * * * *

The first ‘AI Fragment’ appears three days after the files are updated regarding the ‘fracturing of the Alpha unit’. Connie waits in Recovery for Maine to wake up, hoping it doesn’t mean what she really thinks it does. Already other fragments have been ‘collected’ and await implantation. What will warrant a serious enough situation for the ones called Delta and Omega to be assigned to a Freelancer, the supposed ‘next step’ of the program they’ve all been waiting for, makes Connie nervous. York, she thinks, will get one if Carolina’s argument about using the AI to compensate for injuries holds any water. It depends on the whole ‘integration’ process that is apparently theoretical for even the Director. 

When he wakes there is a burning man beside him, a hovering hologram over his shoulder. Connie has to stare for a bit. She’s read so much about the little bit the Director has learned about the Fragments so far, and yet all she can see is the way he burns. The way the flames lick at his skin, and the distortion to what should be smooth contours of the face in a normal person. But he’s not a normal person. Does he even know what he is?

“Ah, Agent Connecticut, a pleasure to meet you. Agent Maine thinks highly of you.”

That earns a grunt, one Connie knows is Maine’s way of saying ‘be quiet.’ 

“It was very kind of you to wait for us to wake up,” Sigma continues, as if ignoring the man he is supposed to help. Perhaps he is. Connie doesn’t even know how to be sure these days. So many strange things are happening that sometimes she wonders if she even knows which way is up anymore. Which, really, is a complicated question when one is on a spaceship, isn’t it? 

“No big deal,” she answers. “He’s my friend.”

“I hope we too can become friends,” Sigma answers, his voice smooth and slick and for some reason it makes Connie think of Florida and that gets her hackles up. 

“Sorry I can’t stick around Maine,” she finds herself saying. “Training session on the books.”

Not even remotely true, and the way that Sigma tucks his hands behind his back at that is strangely familiar and wholly shudder inducing. It takes half a second, and then it clicks. It’s a very Director gesture. 

Oh. 

“You going to be okay?” she asks Maine, looking at the big man directly, trying pointedly not to look at the AI. Fragment. Ghost? God that’s a good question. Better one: will she be okay?

Maine nods though, and Connie stands. She allows a moment to clasp his hand when he offers it, and then she’s all but running out of the room. 

For most of her life Connie has found that her fight instinct has won out over her flight. Given a war for survival, she supposes fight makes more sense. Flight won’t save a species, won’t get answers. Strategic retreats maybe, but running only brands you a coward or a traitor. Perhaps she is the latter. Because for all that she knows what she should be doing, trying to convince people of what is going on, she finds herself fleeing to the empty classroom instead. 

She throws herself deeper and deeper into the records. It’s not like she needs to worry about Alpha anymore, not with what she’s learning. Quarantined, that’s what the records list him as. More or less entirely separated from the greater processes on the ship, replaced by FILSS. And for what? To be torn apart, piece by piece, for the argument of operating Freelancer equipment. Can it really be that simple? 

No, she thinks as hours turn to days turn to weeks and she sees more implantations. It’s never that simple. 

The other data she finds, it’s more of an afterthought. Something she can use to bribe the ‘Insurrectionists’ to help her get away, when her real goal is someone, anyone in the UNSC with the power to shut all this down. An artifact of the Forerunners should tempt whoever pays the bills for the on-loan UNSC soldiers, while Connie runs like mad for ONI or some really powerful Admiral, or just the press to bring this all down. 

She has to save them. Has to prove with the records that the rest of them are innocent. Victims of a program that was supposed to help them. Was supposed to improve them. Was supposed to save lives. Instead it’s become some twisted horror experiment by a mad scientist, like in some old book. 

It’s running, and she understands the problems with that. Fight is the thing her reptile brain tells her to do. They underestimate her. How good she is with her holounit. If she could convince one or two of them, it might be enough to take the ship and force it back to Earth so the Director can stand trial. That isn’t running, it’s fighting. 

They owe too much to the Director for that, though. Loyalty bought through manipulation she knows now. Devotion he doesn’t deserve. They’ve all taken his mission into themselves and don’t dare question no matter how much she tries to prompt it. In this, Connie is alone. Too alone. And that scares her. 

Once she took comfort in knowing that if something went wrong, if something was sick in this program, she could go to her superiors and cut out the tumor herself. Protect her fellows. Now the solitude is almost terrifying. If she fails then what happens? Who stops him? 

The answer is so obvious in the end that she wants to hit herself for not coming up with it earlier. There is one person in the unit who has no reason to be loyal. Hell, a person who has more of a reason to be sickened and enraged by this than anyone else. Someone Connie knows can do this, even if Connie can’t. 

She leaves the dogtags behind in Texas’s locker and hopes it’s enough. Hopes it gets to her if it all goes bad. Then, against all instinct, she prepares to run. 

The thing about running is it tells people that you’re guilty of something. In a way, she might just be that. For letting it get so far. For waiting so long. For not seeing it coming or developing allies or breaking the spell that seems to hold tight over the rest of them. Take the blinders off their eyes and set them free. But no, she failed them as much as she’s failed Alpha, and there is only one choice left. 

One that scares her. 

Running isn’t easy. It isn’t just the guilt that is ascribed to as person, fair or not. It’s the fact that soldiers in a time of war have an instinct about it. One she has found herself prone to in the past. 

Kill it before it kills you. Kill it before it raises an alarm. Kill it before there isn’t another chance. 

Connie knows that if she runs there will be a target painted on her back. If they send Wyoming or North she’ll never even see it coming. But she has to try. 

She has too. 

It’s the only way to save them all. Some of them from themselves. 

In the end, she hopes they’ll see it that way.


End file.
